


Legend shall speak / Of sacrifice at world's end

by cruellae (tinkabelladk)



Series: You and I could end the world in fire or blood [8]
Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Genesis joins the team, Jenova is evil, M/M, Temple of the Ancients, Very AU, mako reactors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-23
Updated: 2019-03-23
Packaged: 2019-11-28 15:27:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18210140
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tinkabelladk/pseuds/cruellae
Summary: Cloud has a knack for collecting powerful warriors to join his quest. Genesis has his own reasons for wanting to find Sephiroth.~In which Jenova lays claim to someone who belongs to Genesis, Cloud decides that two SOLDIERs are better than one, and for once, Genesis doesn't have a plan.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> For the purposes of this story, neither Genesis nor Cloud recognize each other from the battle with Zack Fair. Cloud was in the daze of his mako addiction and Genesis dismissed him as merely a useless cadet, and didn’t pay much attention. 
> 
> It gets very AU up in here! Just to warn you.

_It took Genesis quite some time to recover after his battle with Zack Fair. Though the degradation was cured, it left him weak and feeble, and he knew he needed to gather his strength and his thoughts before setting out again._

_He stayed in Banora, and helped those who remained to rebuild, planting dumbapple seeds in the ashes of his parents_ _’ orchard and practicing his swordplay among the saplings. It wasn’t effortless like it used to be, but over the course of the years he spent there, he honed it to a bitter edge, his youthful exuberance tempered by the memory of what he had lost._

_Sephiroth was dead. He had heard the news not long after it reached their provincial area, and was not terribly surprised by it. He had seen the madness behind Sephiroth_ _’s eyes when last they met, a madness that he had, if not placed there, at least set ablaze._

#

The sleepy town of Kalm went about its subdued business, huddling on the outskirts of the great stain on the planet that was Midgar. Genesis came here occasionally on supply runs, to get the kind of technological gadgets they only made in Midgar.

He was stepping out of the general store one late afternoon when he caught a glimpse of sun on steel, a rare ray of light breaking through the clouds to land on a familiar blade.

_The Buster Sword._

The man who carried it was a head shorter than Angeal, with spiky blond hair and a wary tension to his shoulders. Genesis followed him discreetly into the only bar in town, and watched from a dark corner as the stranger set the blade against the table, then put his boots up on the opposite chair and leaned back to drink his beer.

The stranger took a long drink from the bottle, then raised his head and very deliberately met Genesis’s eyes in a firm challenge. His irises were sky-blue and mako-bright, shining clearly through the cigarette smoke that filled the room.

A SOLDIER, then. But why didn’t Genesis recognize him? And how did he have the sword?

Well, there was no point pretending his cover wasn’t blown. Genesis made his way to the table, sliding into the chair that wasn’t occupied with a pair of dusty leather boots.

“That’s an interesting weapon,” Genesis said, by way of introduction. He wanted the stranger to talk first, so that he could decide what of his own story to reveal.

“It was a gift.” The man’s calloused fingers closed around the hilt. “From a friend.” His voice was low, with a slight accent that told Genesis he’d grown up somewhere in the western mountains. A country boy, far from home.

Genesis wondered if Zack Fair was dead, then. He wouldn’t be parted from this sword if he still lived.

“Genesis Rhapsodos, right?” the man said. “I’m Cloud Strife. I made SOLDIER First Class, but that must have been…after you left.”

Genesis nodded. He supposed there was no denying it.

“You knew Sephiroth,” Cloud continued. “Didn’t you?”

Genesis blinked at him, and everything he had meant to say somehow slipped away. In Banora, it was considered bad luck to speak the names of the dead. He had not heard “Sephiroth,” spoken aloud in five years. He’d forgotten how much he liked the sound of it, how it felt like a steel blade cutting the still air.

“He’s back,” Cloud said. “I don’t know how but he is. I saw the Masamune sticking out of President Shinra’s corpse. No one else could have done that.”

Genesis remembered what it was to hold the Masamune, its cold, sinister power. It would not have obeyed his will, or any other, save Sephiroth. He studied Cloud’s solemn face wondering— _could it be_?

“Why now? After all this time?”

“I don’t know,” Cloud said. “But I’m going after him. Whatever’s going on, I’m going to stop him.”

Genesis held back a bitter laugh. It was absurd to think of this diminutive swordsman as being anything approaching Sephiroth’s equal.

“How will you find him?” Genesis asked.

“I’m on his trail. The people here say they saw him heading east out towards the chocobo farms. I’m headed that way next.” Cloud took his boots off the table and sat up. “I want to tell you a story about him. But other people need to hear it too, and I don’t want to tell it more than once. Do you have a few hours to listen?”

#

“So now you know,” Cloud said quietly when he finished the end of his long, twisting tale. His companions were gathered around him, the two women sitting on one of the beds in the inn room, the man with the gun arm occupying a desk chair, the odd talking animal lying on a rug.

Genesis was leaning against the far wall, half in shadow. He’d listened without speaking a word. He’d known that Sephiroth was unbalanced by the information Genesis had shared about Jenova—Genesis had counted on it. It had been meant as a cruelty, and had apparently been very effective if two days later Sephiroth seemed to have lost all sense of reason.

“Did you kill him?” he asked, and though he tried to keep his voice low and unconcerned, it filled the quiet room.

“I—” Cloud shook his head like he was trying to clear it. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.”

The story was full of holes, of gaps where Cloud blanked out or perhaps had something to hide. There was no way he could have been in the reactor with Sephiroth that day—Genesis had been there. And it was odd that throughout the tale he made no mention of Zack Fair. But Genesis said nothing to contradict him. The way it was told rang true. Cloud was perhaps not always accurate, but he was not lying. There was something more at work, and Genesis wouldn’t reveal his hand until he knew what it was.

“Maybe he didn’t die at all,” said Red XIII, lifting his head from the rug. “I saw his sword sticking out of President Shinra’s back.”

“Maybe someone else used his sword,” Barret suggested. “That’s not really—”

“No one else can use that sword,” Genesis interjected coolly. They all stared at him, startled, and he realized that if he stayed in that room for much longer, he would start stabbing people with whatever weapon he could grab first. Sephiroth was _dead,_ he had probably died alone and in agony at the bottom of a mako reactor, and all these people could do was discuss it like it was some sort of puzzle.

He left quickly, and without saying goodbye.

In the weapons store, he bought the best sword they had on offer—his own Rapier was rusting in the center of the orchard. He also purchased as much materia as he could afford, and swiped a piece he couldn’t on the way out. If Sephiroth was alive somehow, somewhere, Genesis would find him.

Cloud Strife was waiting by Genesis’s chocobo. When Genesis walked into the stables, he was running his hand down its beak, holding up an apple for it to devour.

He turned and gave Genesis a cautious glance. He was wearing Angeal’s sword, and he had a bracer equipped in which Genesis could see bright orbs of materia glinting.

“I know it’s upsetting,” Cloud said, in his easy, understated way. “I thought Sephiroth was a hero too.”

Genesis nodded. Over the last five years he had learned that there was value in silence, as well as in words, and how to draw out others into sharing things they’d never thought to reveal. He wasn’t the young man he’d been once, overflowing with wit and exuberance. He was tempered by his defeat at Zack Fair’s hand, and the long, bitter years after.

“I want justice,” Cloud said, with a flash of hot fury that quickly faded into his usual stoic calm. “For Nibelheim, and everyone else he’s hurt. I’m going after him, and I could really use another SOLDIER with me.”

Genesis raised an eyebrow. An invitation to join this quest was the last thing he’d expected from Cloud Strife. But he supposed it made sense—Cloud had probably gathered the rest of his team in much the same way. And he would need all the help he could get if he wanted to face Sephiroth.

“Do you really think you can defeat him?” Genesis asked.

Cloud shrugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. But I have to try.”

“And you’re sure you can find him?”

“I’m sure.” Cloud spoke with quiet conviction.

“Then I’m with you to the end,” Genesis said. “I have a score to settle with him too.” If this swordsman could lead him to Sephiroth, then he’d gladly follow for as long as it took.


	2. Chapter 2

While Cloud and his two favorite companions went into the Temple of the Ancients, Genesis slipped away from the others and took to the skies. He circled the forest surrounding the temple until he found what he was looking for—a flash of steel catching the sunlight.

Sephiroth was sitting in the canopy of an ancient tree, on a branch larger around than he was, watching Cloud and the others approach the temple entrance. He looked just as he had the day Genesis left him in that mako drenched metal chamber where he would fall to his death a few days later, and Genesis’s breath caught in his throat at the sight, even though he knew this was likely just a clone, not Sephiroth’s real self.

“Genesis.” The clone’s eyes flashed, changing from their usual blue-green to an unearthly purple. His features shifted to become more alien, his strangeness more pronounced. “My wayward son.”

“I’m not your son,” Genesis said. “I have no mother.”

“You have always known.” Jenova’s voice was the same unearthly melody that he’d sometimes heard in his dreams, in his nightmares. “That you are more than this. You have always burned. For something more.”

“Where is Sephiroth?” Genesis asked.

“You do not bring love. For your mother?”

Genesis shook his head. “Where is Sephiroth?” 

“My favorite son. My love. Sephiroth is mine,” Jenova said. Genesis curled his hand around the hilt of his sword, and Jenova laughed, a dark song he could feel thrumming in his bones. “You hate that. Most of all. You hate that he is not yours. That he chose me. In the end.”

Genesis felt rage overtake him, hot and buzzing in his ears, and without thinking he ran forward and thrust his sword through the alien’s chest.

She laughed again, the sound fading bit by bit as her aspect left the clone’s body. Sephiroth stared up at Genesis, his eyes wide in shock.

“Genesis,” he said, raising a hand to touch the side of the blade through his chest, as though he couldn’t quite believe it was real. “There’s going to be fire. There’s…”

_You burn, my son,_ Jenova whispered to him. _You were the Meteor first, when you burned it all down._

As Jenova and Sephiroth let go of the clone’s body and the life faded from its eyes, it became what it had once been, before the experiments, before the Jenova cells, before all of it. He was barely more than a boy, with the fine features of the mountain folk, sturdy shoulders and coarse hands.

Genesis stood over the body for a long time before taking to the skies again.


	3. Chapter 3

“For me, it’s a personal thing,” Cloud Strife said, standing at the head of the airship, his crew of misfits collected around him. “I’m in it to take out Sephiroth. But we all need to know the reason we fight. So I want everybody to take a couple days to go home, or wherever. Remember why you do it. And everybody needs a reason. If you don’t come back, that’s okay. But I’ll be here, no matter what.”

Genesis nodded along with the others, imitating their fierce loyalty and determination as they turned towards their diminutive leader. Cloud spoke with them each in turn, kneeling to be level with Red XIII, putting a hand gently on Yuffie’s arm when she gestured too violently and almost lost her balance. He said something to each of them, something that made them smile and stand a little straighter.

“You want to be dropped off in Banora?” he asked Genesis. His eyes were bright but somber, and although he had idolized Zack Fair and even deluded himself that they were the same person, there was no trace of Zack’s carefree charm or happy-go-lucky attitude. Cloud Strife was a deeply serious person. In that way, he was much more like Sephiroth than Zack.

Genesis considered it, then shook his head. “There’s nothing left for me in Banora. But my mother…my mother had people in the mountains near Nibelheim. I guess maybe I’ll go there.” It was a lie, of course, but Genesis had his own reasons for wanting to be in the mountains, his own ghosts to visit.

Cloud gave him a firm nod, patting him gently on the shoulder. “We’ll bring justice for Sephiroth. I promise you.” He walked away, a slender, spiky-topped silhouette against the blue of the sky.

#

Genesis made his way quickly through the mountains towards the Nibelheim Reactor. Cloud was right. Genesis needed to remember why he was fighting, why he had lied and charmed his way through this entire quest so skillfully Cloud thought of him as just another of the ragtag group of companions that followed him everywhere.

Genesis had avoided the Nibelheim Reactor since the day he’d turned on Sephiroth—the last day he’d seen Sephiroth alive. Now his boots echoed on the metal floors as he walked through the empty room, the presence of mako tugging beneath his skin like an irritating but familiar ghost.

He stood in the central walkway, put his hands on the railing, and looked into the depths below. He couldn’t see the bottom—the mako flare was too bright. He imagined Sephiroth as Cloud had described him, falling to his death on the metal floor a hundred feet below. A fall like that wouldn’t have killed him instantly, but it would have shattered his bones. He would have lain there, in agony, for who knows how long, before he finally died.

Genesis unfurled his wing and leapt over the side, floating down to the lower level. The amount of mako radiation down here would be toxic to the uninitiated, but of course he had more mako than blood in his veins already, and so did Sephiroth.

He didn’t know what he expected to find, but there was nothing down there. No bones, no feathers, no evidence that anything might have happened. Except—his eyes caught on a glint of silver, and he picked it up. It was his earring, the one Sephiroth had cut from his ear in a long-ago sparring match.

He clenched his fist around it and closed his eyes.

_I am going to kill Cloud Strife._

The thought always made him feel calmer. Cloud was strong, and had many powerful allies, but someday Genesis would make his move, and Cloud would regret that moment in the reactor five years ago. He would wish he had laid down and let Sephiroth kill him.

Genesis didn’t have a firm plan, exactly, for what would happen when they reached the bottom of the North Crater. But he knew that he could not stand against Cloud and all his companions together, and even if he did, Sephiroth would probably not recognize him as an ally. Or rather, Jenova wouldn’t. He would have to be careful. But he had no intention of letting Sephiroth die, not ever again.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> One more installment to go!


End file.
